Comments
erosram t1_j6e7v7s wrote
Because American companies taking Americans data is not a security risk for them, China taking Americans data is a security risk for them.
Witty-Village-2503 t1_j6ey1st wrote
But if that really was a concern then the US should be adding data protection laws. Facebook is already giving data to China.
Facebook confirms data-sharing agreements with Chinese firms
skolioban t1_j6g30n1 wrote
Basically "US billionaires making more money = good" while "China billionaires making more money = bad" because it's zero sum to them. It all comes down to that.
doncastiglionejr t1_j6h711h wrote
False . This is like the whoever Russian influencing elections and other nefarious acts. But bury the lede when you wanna be on china's balls becauae they're cornered and scared of big ol United States
JockstrapCummies t1_j6g9nqr wrote
Because American politicians still live in a world of nation states, refusing to realise that the tech moguls don't have any national allegiance.
doncastiglionejr t1_j6h73el wrote
They do when you fine their ass and can possibly break them up like they did Microsoft back in the day. Learn your history folks
JockstrapCummies t1_j6h9veh wrote
>They do when you fine their ass and can possibly break them up like they did Microsoft back in the day.
That was back in the day when the technology sector wasn't the biggest constituent of the American oligarchy.
As we see the political class and some of the old families bow to them now.
[deleted] t1_j6h0nj1 wrote
They do though. The nation they reside in. Beyond this the ability for a state to reach out and grab someone has never been better. So your notion of tech billionaire being out of danger is nothing but a Hollywood fiction.
Fast_Championship_R t1_j6fem58 wrote
I agree, but at a minimum we cannot have apps like Tik tok feeding information directly to our enemies.
ControlledShutdown t1_j6culne wrote
Because the whole issue is not about protecting privacy. It's about protecting US social media companies from competition.
monchota t1_j6efqtl wrote
You know you are spreading the info put out by the CCP right? Its a national security threat pure and simple.
octodanger t1_j6f6ebp wrote
What’s the threat?
ovirt001 t1_j6fh9jr wrote
The collection of private user data by a foreign adversary. It's used in influence operations.
octodanger t1_j6fwgih wrote
What are influence operations?
ovirt001 t1_j6gku6w wrote
Programs by governments to influence foreign opinion.
If you want some current examples, check out /r/ActiveMeasures.
emkoemko t1_j6evjox wrote
what competition all US social media is banned in China what are you talking about?
ControlledShutdown t1_j6fw24z wrote
I meant competition in the US market.
emkoemko t1_j6g2vdg wrote
how do you compete against over a billion people that are only allowed to have their state approved social media...? you do know social media is global? if over a billion people are removed from your market while your competitor has access to everyone in the world is that fair competition?
ControlledShutdown t1_j6g3i5j wrote
It's not a fair competition. That's why the US government want to protect their companies from it.
doncastiglionejr t1_j6h78pa wrote
False again (man, are you guys 18?!)..if that was the case they wouldn't of let Tik Tok start up here in the first place..and there are lots of examples of this happening in the past where companies had to conform to US law or they cannot operate on US internet providers
SuperbHuman t1_j6g48go wrote
It's both a security risk and protecting U.S companies and then it's also the fact that China doesn't like/allow U.S apps to operate in China so what does the U.S has to loose from this ban?
neolobe t1_j6iga5o wrote
The big US tech companies have lobbyists working on politicians and using the privacy as a smoke screen.
The true issue is not privacy. The true issue is TikTok is eating these other companies for lunch. It's newer, it's fresher, it has more active users. Youtube, Facebook, and Insta have blatant short-format ripoffs of Tiktok on their sites trying to stay relevant. And their versions with such low-level content are an embarrassment. People actually make content for TikTok. FB and YT just rip it off. TikTok is a major player in the entertainment industries now.
That is the true issue.
wart365 t1_j6cvhf8 wrote
IMO the real issue isn't so much privacy but that Americans failed to build social media Americans want to use. In the marketplace of ideas a Chinese company is winning. Their formula resonates with a generation of American teenagers and is the voice of their generation. This speaks to a profound failure by older generations to create media zoomers want to consume. It also highlights why privacy is dead - young people know Tik-Tok is owned by China and that anything they post is public but don't beilive in privacy as a concept anymore, even if it's privacy against an invasive, manipulative, evil foreign power.
fortfive t1_j6d0cb4 wrote
It’s possible that zoomers have reconfigured their ideas of privacy. A lack of privacy on frivolous matters might dazzle eyes prying into more important matters.
Revolutionary_Lie539 t1_j6dg470 wrote
The concept of being a social media diva and privacy seems backasswards to me.
fortfive t1_j6dp6u3 wrote
You are not alone.
vuxanov t1_j6dtj2c wrote
Privacy died with Google and Facebook.
emkoemko t1_j6evqi5 wrote
what are Chinese companies winning? they have zero competition.... all US social media is banned in China ...
fuzzyedges1974 t1_j6crmnw wrote
Congress does love its lobbyist money
LavenderAutist t1_j6d2viu wrote
Get them out
marketrent OP t1_j6ckwca wrote
Excerpt:
>TikTok is grappling with an increasingly real prospect of being banned in the United States. This wouldn’t just be a mostly performative prohibition of installing the app on federal or state government-owned devices.
>The ban TikTok is now facing would forbid its China-based parent company, ByteDance, from doing business in the United States, which would block Apple and Google from hosting the TikTok app in their app stores.
>It wouldn’t make it illegal for you, the consumer, to use TikTok. It would just make it much harder to do so.
>ByteDance is spending a lot of money trying to convince detractors that it doesn’t take marching orders from China and that it wouldn’t give the Chinese government US user data or influence US users.
>
>The company has spent millions building up and expanding its Washington, DC, presence, and more than $1 billion on “Project Texas,” an effort to rebuild the app on US servers in order to wall it off from ByteDance and China as much as possible, while also promising several layers of independent oversight and transparency.
>Accordingly, TikTok is getting more aggressive about making Project Texas’s case to politicians, public interest groups, academics, and the media after years of lying low and quietly trying to work out a deal that CFIUS [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] still has yet to officially agree to.
>The company briefed think tanks in late January, while TikTok’s lobbyists have also “swarmed” lawmakers’ offices, and the company is currently hiring several people for communications and policy positions on a state and federal level, according to the New York Times.
>The only thing that may have grown faster than TikTok’s popularity in the US is the company’s DC presence.
>
>ByteDance spent just $270,000 on federal lobbyists in 2019, a year when TikTok agreed to a settlement with the FTC over children’s privacy law violations for a then-record fine of $5.7 million and when lawmakers started to raise concerns over its ties to China.
>ByteDance and TikTok spent $2.61 million on federal lobbyists in 2020, hiring people with connections to Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike (some were former lawmakers themselves).
>That spending nearly doubled to $5.18 million in 2021, and grew again to about $5.5 million in 2022, according to publicly available data. In late 2021, TikTok signed a lease for its first DC office. In April 2022, it grabbed an additional floor.
>That October, it hired Jamal Brown, who was the press secretary for Biden’s presidential campaign and then the deputy press secretary for the Pentagon, as a policy communications director.
>While ByteDance has spent a lot on federal lobbying, some of its peers — Meta and Amazon, for instance — still spend a lot more. Meta, for instance, spent over $19.15 million on lobbying in 2022, and Amazon spent $21.38 million.
Sara Morrison, 26 Jan. 2023, Vox.com (Vox Media)
Boo_Guy t1_j6crekz wrote
Politicians are usually pretty cheap.
They'll have to toss some extra in because 'China-Ooga-Booga' but they're still buyable.
tickleMyBigPoop t1_j6dabld wrote
Funny.
Remember the 1990s, congress was talking about (read harassing) Microsoft. Most tech firms then wanted to stay far away from DC so DC came to them…..and once tech stated ‘lobbying’ and opening up bullshit offices in certain districts the harassment stopped.
littleMAS t1_j6fsu8i wrote
As the article points out, ByteDance may be flashing some cash but not nearly in the same league as other major tech companies. Frugality is a vulnerability in politics. If China got behind ByteDance and laid down some very serious PAC money, say nine figures, Congress would make TikTok the nation's video game.
[deleted] t1_j6h0qwo wrote
No. If China got behind them it would be an easier ban.
[deleted] t1_j6cjtn0 wrote
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[deleted] t1_j6ck7re wrote
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Badtrainwreck t1_j6eeyds wrote
TikTok recently got called out for the fact that it gives almost all of its employees the ability to manually increase the reach a video makes, obviously they want this for building brand relations but the fact that they don’t have more controls and a better outline for when it can be utilized shows that they aren’t really in the business to do this the right way.
But, I’m sure you if you at any of the other competitors you’ll find they are just as bad. Corporate greed is at the forefront and nothing else
monchota t1_j6efly4 wrote
The grassroots campaign yo try and make people think it was about the content has been crazy. Its a national security threat pure and simple.
[deleted] t1_j6fi7z5 wrote
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cerebraldormancy t1_j6foce8 wrote
We hope not. Make it go away already.
w3bCraw1er t1_j6gxihk wrote
Sure. Buying politicians is the way.
nubsauce87 t1_j6gylmv wrote
Please let us keep our spy software on your people's phones! Here's some money! PLEASE?!
Landpuma t1_j6gd78p wrote
Ban that trash!
emkoemko t1_j6ew2tv wrote
why are people saying this is about competition and not about the security threat from the CCCP? what competition? all US social media is banned in China so i don't understand this argument at all.
RollingTater t1_j6cng1s wrote
This whole thing is just dancing around the true issue, which is why not make actual privacy laws? Like Google/Amazon/Facebook doing the sideeye monkey meme right now.